nasif has every right to boast if he is able to get a stock yielding close to 100 pc. but it has to be compared to index. anyone who can consistently beat the index has all the bragging rights.

but its unfortunate, his second line. brother bought citibank. this is classic consumer bias. i have been saying citigroup was a pos since 2009. but if u have a good entry point then its not bad. c should be bough cose to 3 dollars or 30 dollars and sold close to 5 or 50 dollars pre and post split. i dnt think split has much affect on the stock. if anything reverse split is SUPPOSED to be good. many institutional buying restricts stocks purchase under certain price ie under 5 dollars. so by reverse splitting c opening its doors to potential institutional. / mutual fund buying. often it is the power of institutional buying that moves a stock significantly.

nobody cares? this is an interesting bull market - election year. the real q is can dow break 13 k. i already said back in may dow would swing between 11k to 13 k (when wall st was spreading double recession fear) if no new changes are seen ie european default crisis, lack of job growth. if i m to go with how i though back then i should get out now but momentum is on bull side.

just because this is an election year, i will ride it out. dow to above 13k.

Originally Posted by iDumb
These flash crashes are bullshit. Looks more corrective than panicky. Market supposed to react in anticipation of news, this time the flash crash was after an expected news came. Nothing happened to any solid stocks. When everyone is panicky and looks for the exit, that's a good entry point going against wave. When everyone has money in the side, waiting to get in despite 500 points crash I would say market is pretty stable. Nothing really changed in last 6 months. Dow is gonna trade in the 11000 and 13000 range. So yeah I would say it's a good entry point with some low and slow profit. But if down crack below 11000 or whatever support level, I would hold on till fear sweeps across the board affecting good stock like aapl amzn goog isrg etc.Posted via BC Mobile Edition (1)

NEW YORK (AP) -- On a normal day, 4 billion shares of stock change hands on the New York Stock Exchange. One in 10 belongs to a single company. It's not McDonald's or IBM, both of which have been on a tear.
It's Bank of America — bailed out by the government three years ago, reviled for being part of the mortgage frenzy that helped wreck the economy and selling for not much more than an ATM fee.
When the market goes up because of positive news about the economy, Bank of America stock shoots up past the stocks of other big banks. When traders get worried about Greek debt, Bank of America takes the biggest plunge.
The big swings are not driven by a fundamental bet that the bank will be more profitable because the economy is getting better or a real concern that it will lose more money than others if there is a default in Greece.
Instead, Bank of America is the stock of the moment for high-frequency trading, the supercomputer-driven buying and selling that barely existed a few years ago and now accounts for as much as two-thirds of U.S. trading.
The bank's single-digit stock price and flood of shares on the market — three times as many as its nearest big-bank competitor — make it an attractive target for hedge funds and banks that employ high-powered, computerized trading.
"The movement of Bank of America stock on most days has nothing to do with Bank of America," says Joseph Saluzzi, co-founder of brokerage firm Themis Trading.
In other words, the stock moves because it moves. Bank of America stock has risen or fallen 1 percent or more on 20 days this year. The Standard & Poor's 500 index has only done it three times.
For the year, Bank of America is up 46 percent, best of the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones industrial average. Big banks collectively are up 15 percent.
In high-frequency trading, investors use computer algorithms to exploit small changes in a stock's price. If a computer can seize on a stock like Bank of America a fraction of a second faster than the rest of the market, it can book a tiny profit.
Those pennies add up over tens of millions of shares a day to produce big gains. And when computers rush to buy or sell a stock like Bank of America, it can result in accelerated moves in the stock price. Buying leads to more buying, selling to more selling.
Bank of America is part of the Standard & Poor's 500, and therefore held in mutual funds in the retirement accounts of millions of Americans. And mutual fund managers hate high-frequency trading.
Not only does it make the stocks in their portfolios more volatile, but fund managers fume that high-frequency computers can detect their stock orders, step in to change the price of a stock slightly and pocket a small profit.
"It has nothing to do with the fundamentals," says Leon Cooperman, a billionaire investor, chairman of hedge fund Omega Advisors and former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
For computers to move in and out quickly, there must be enough shares available to trade. Bank of America has a truckload — 10.5 billion shares outstanding, compared with 3.8 billion for JPMorgan Chase and 2.9 billion for Citigroup.
The stock traded as high as $15.31 last year. Then investors, worried about how deep the bank's mortgage problems might be, drove it below $10 in July. High-frequency traders pounced, and Bank of America's volume exploded. It was 147 million shares last summer. On Thursday, 477 million shares changed hands.
The low price put it in the sweet spot for high-frequency trading. If a high-frequency operation is trading blocks of 100 shares at a time to capitalize on a 1-cent change, there's a lot less risk working with a $5 stock than a $500 one.
It makes Bank of America "a juicy trade at very little risk," says Adam Sussman, director of research at Tabb Group, a markets advisory firm.
In 2009 and 2010, Citigroup, then part-owned by the government, was in the same spot. Its price was in single digits, and it seesawed day to day. It was often the highest-volume stock — as many as 500 million shares changing hands in one day.
Last year, Citi reduced the number of shares by exchanging one share for every 10. That brought its stock price up — $33 on Wednesday — and high-frequency traders stopped flocking to it. Volume on a normal day has dropped to 50 million.
Bank of America went the opposite way in November and December and sold 400 million more shares to the market to raise $3.5 billion and improve its financial stability.
Today, some investors — the human ones — are buying Bank of America because they like CEO Brian Moynihan's efforts to shore up the company's finances. Other investors won't touch it because they are afraid of the billions Bank of America is still spending to fight mortgage lawsuits. Charles Bobrinskoy, director of research at Ariel Investments, even calls the company "unanalyzable."
But none of those groups is driving the stock. Some days, it moves with little or no tangible reason.
On Jan. 5, the stock jumped 8 percent with no explanation. The Wall Street Journal blogged that the stock was rising on "reports/rumors/blind hopes" about President Barack Obama appointing a new head to the federal housing agency.
On Jan. 10, a Barclays bank analyst lowered his price target on Bank of America stock and Morgan Stanley and Zacks Investment Research downgraded the stock. The stock didn't fall — it popped up 6 percent more.
Analysts say high-frequency trading is partly responsible for the huge daily swings in the market in 2010 and 2011. The technique gained notoriety after May 6, 2010, the day of Wall Street's "flash crash." The Dow fell almost 1,000 points in minutes, bewildering traders and inciting panic. The market recovered to close down 348 points.
High-frequency trading was blamed and attracted scrutiny from regulators. The Securities and Exchange Commission didn't ultimately blame high-frequency trading for the crash, but said it exacerbated the decline. Regulators haven't done anything to curb it.
Sometimes high-frequency traders don't even profit from the trade itself. They buy and sell shares at the same price and make money by sending large orders through the exchanges.
NYSE, Nasdaq and others want to attract the most traders. So they offer rebates of 20 to 32 cents per 100 shares to traders who send in large orders. On the electronic exchange NYSE Arca, traders who can move 35 million shares pocket a quick $112,000.
"Rebates will be the same no matter what the price, so the computers keep trading all day long," says Keith Bliss, senior vice president at brokerage firm Cuttone & Co.
Bank of America says it has no position on high-frequency trading. At some point it could reduce its shares, as Citi did. But the bank is focused on strengthening its finances, the reason it sold more shares in November and December.
Bank of America's chief financial officer, Bruce Thompson, told reporters in January that the bank isn't likely to buy back stock this year. So for now, those human investors will have to buckle up for the ride.

Originally Posted by BANFAN
Facebook releasing shares for the first time ..... Try to get it udumb..... It will go wild when it comes to secondary markets..

Brother, I wouldn't touch face book for first 1 month if i am to invest. It's good maybe for a trade in 3rd or 4th day when dumping would happen but it is a very very risky stock to be in with REAL money. One has to be a very deciplined trader to be able to potentially make money off of this.

I mean it's easy to say go buy it, you have to give me a gameplan and what you think will happen.

This is how i think it willl play out - facebook's hyped up value is 100b. They will release IPO price in around 65B or so (intentionally "undervalued") which gives a potential momentum for 100 b + run up. But this 65B offer would be available to the big boys - by the time market opens, it will open at arond +40% to 50% to around 95 B, then maybe run up a lilttle toward 100B and then the exchange of hands and dumping would start.

But given such a high exuberance retail (ie you and I and facebook users) there would be lot of collective demand preventing the downward spiral on profit taking. I consider this a very risky venture above 100b, i mean what is your upward potential 20%? Trade bac instead. I would be a buyer at 70-75B though if swing bring the price around that or in a month.

again this is based on "feelings" very minimal logic - mostly market psyche rather. maybe it will be no where close :p

Since I'm not buying stocks myself... Because I would rather invest in commodities rather than in fragile stock markets IMO... I believe in physical commodities rather than commodity shares even...given the financial and political scenario of current time commodity (Gold/Silver/Precious Metals) is the safest investment. Dollar and euro may become toilet papers tomorrow, but gold/silver won't. Do you know that that silver will extinct by 2020? so if you have a quantity of it... You can expect 500-600% return in 5-7 years. ......

Ok regarding Facebook shares... As much as I know they will go for issuing IPO, where you can buy it on face value instead of hyped up market price. Then you take the advantage of selling a part of it when the shares will be released for trading in the secondary market. Wait for 3-6 months before selling, the value will hype upto 3-400 % as per most analysts. Then sell it before it falls and settles at around 50-100% higher than the face value... That will be another time for buying, since it will again go high after that but in a stable way...

Ok regarding Facebook shares... As much as I know they will go for issuing IPO, where you can buy it on face value instead of hyped up market price. Then you take the advantage of selling a part of it when the shares will be released for trading in the secondary market. Wait for 3-6 months before selling, the value will hype upto 3-400 % as per most analysts. Then sell it before it falls and settles at around 50-100% higher than the face value... That will be another time for buying, since it will again go high after that but in a stable way...

I am not sure what you mean by that you can buy facebook at ipo face value. i highly doubt that an individual investor without significant capital can buy shares at the price they will set for ipo before it comes to nyse. let me know how i dnt know abt this.

if you think fb is gonna go 400 pc in 3 months, why would u buy silver to have 400 pc in 5 years? i think it is worth the risk if u are convinced.

however, there is no way in hell fb is gonna be up 400 pc in 3 months. lol. which analysts are these? if it ends up happening, its ok - no regrets, i could potentially quadruple my money in casino too which is devoid of any logic and based on chance.

yeah credit card stocks are good. my favorite has always been mastard card though. By financials i meant bank stocks. i sold my bac position when dow stalled at just below 13 k on low volume, i ddint like the volumes past 2 weeks. fas i held thinking if overall market moves upward (which would primarily be driven by european debt/bank rescues, job growth) by default banks (the cause of recession) would be up signifivantly. but now if dow drops in fear of the same crap for last 1 year, bank stocks woild be first to suffer; not apple. thats why i am scared. i lost a lot of money past 3 days.....u cant hold this type of stocks .. gotta trade with market sentiment.

Facebook has set a price range of $28 to $35 for its initial public offering of stock.
At the high end, this could raise as much as $11.8 billion. If the underwriters sell the extra stock reserved for overallotments, the IPO will value Facebook at $79.3 billion at the high end of the price range.
That's much higher than any other Internet IPO in the past, even Google Inc. in 2004, which raised $1.9 billion. The range came in a regulatory filing Thursday.
After that, Facebook will go on an "IPO roadshow," where executives talk to potential investors about why they should invest in the stock. If all goes well, Facebook's stock is expected to price on May 17 and make its public debut on May 18.
Facebook's IPO has been highly anticipated, not just because of how much money it will raise but because Facebook itself is so popular. The world's largest online social network has more than 900 million users worldwide.

so if at $35, it is valued at 80 billion, at 28 a share, the valuation would be 64 billion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by idumb
feb 10th
This is how i think it willl play out - facebook's hyped up value is 100b. They will release IPO price in around 65B or so (intentionally "undervalued") which gives a potential momentum for 100 b + run up.

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